thedrifter
09-27-07, 04:05 AM
A soldier comes home
Jerome soldier to return from Iraq with Bronze Star
By Cass Friedman
Times-News writer
As he was awarded a Bronze Star for valor on Saturday in Ayer, Mass., the farm boy who grew up in Jerome in the 1970s, tossing hay and milking cows at his grandparents' farm in Shoshone, also had a second reason to rejoice.
Finally, he was coming back to Idaho.
Watching Maj. Vaughn L. Ward accept his new decorations were 200 Marines and Navy sailors of Company C, 1st Battalion, 25th Marines, a reserve unit based near Hartford, Conn. Ward led the Marines and their Navy corpsmen through the most harrowing eight months of his and their lives. Ward, 38, took over the unit in March 2006 after its commander was killed in action.
Together, they survived daily battles in and around a military compound in Fallujah, Iraq.
"We endured 130 attacks in less than seven months - a couple times we were attacked three times in one day,"said Ward. "We had 140 mortars fired into our compound. They blew up my trucks, they killed my generators." Four Marines were killed. About 60 were wounded. And Ward sacrificed three of his five married years.
"Sometimes it affects you mentally," he said. "(But) you're out there being a leader. You care more about what they're going through."
At the ceremony, Ward made sure to give his Marines all the credit.
Returning home from Iraq, the 1987 Jerome High School alum, watched his Marines celebrated as heros in Hartford. As they passed through the streets escorted behind a motorcade, trucks blew their horns and people waved American flags.
"The Marines ... you couldn't have erased that smile from ear to ear," he said.
And while his daughter and wife flew to Hartford to greet Ward on that festive occasion, the soldier still wasn't home. His journey back to Idaho remained incomplete.
It has continued that way. Despite several visits home, Ward has spent the past year stuck in a job on Capitol Hill, feeling out of sorts while watching acrimonious battles waged over the future of his service, the war and the country.
"Sometimes I think I'd rather be in combat than on Capitol Hill - with these senators going at it," he said. "It is so divisive. Some of the language is so spiteful. It's hard for a guy from combat to listen to it."
Constant danger gave Ward a simpler world, where Americans fight for a common cause.
But the danger - the close calls - were often excruciating.
A sniper's bullet once grazed Ward, who was pacing outside a mosque while waiting for approval to raid it.
"I will never forget the whine of the bullet," said Ward, who convinced himself the bullet had struck him. "I was feeling around my neck (thinking) it got me. My knees began buckling."
Marines rushed to help, but found him untouched. He never was wounded in Iraq.
On Oct. 11, Ward, his wife Kirsten and their 2-year-old daughter will complete the long circuit home when his plane touches down in Boise. He plans to settle there or in Twin Falls, depending on his job prospects.
That's happy news for his sister in Gooding, his father in Twin Falls, his grandmother in Jerome and not least of all his mother, Mo Tranmer, who lives in Idaho Falls.
Tranmer has missed many nights of sleep between the Vietnam war, which killed her brother, and the war in Afghanistan, where her nephew fought, and the war in Iraq, where Ward and another of her nephews have fought.
"It was hard for me," Tranmer said. "It's a military family and it is a family that is extremely close, it's not like we want to send our kids out there. You know they are doing what they know they must."
And Ward said he will remain a Marine, attached to a Boise-area reserve company.
"These Marines went out and endured some pretty hellish times when we were there," Ward said. And then he chuckled and said showing the first sign of immodesty, "No other company commander received a Bronze Star."
Cass Friedman can be reached at 735-3241 or cfriedman@magicvalley.com.
Ellie
Jerome soldier to return from Iraq with Bronze Star
By Cass Friedman
Times-News writer
As he was awarded a Bronze Star for valor on Saturday in Ayer, Mass., the farm boy who grew up in Jerome in the 1970s, tossing hay and milking cows at his grandparents' farm in Shoshone, also had a second reason to rejoice.
Finally, he was coming back to Idaho.
Watching Maj. Vaughn L. Ward accept his new decorations were 200 Marines and Navy sailors of Company C, 1st Battalion, 25th Marines, a reserve unit based near Hartford, Conn. Ward led the Marines and their Navy corpsmen through the most harrowing eight months of his and their lives. Ward, 38, took over the unit in March 2006 after its commander was killed in action.
Together, they survived daily battles in and around a military compound in Fallujah, Iraq.
"We endured 130 attacks in less than seven months - a couple times we were attacked three times in one day,"said Ward. "We had 140 mortars fired into our compound. They blew up my trucks, they killed my generators." Four Marines were killed. About 60 were wounded. And Ward sacrificed three of his five married years.
"Sometimes it affects you mentally," he said. "(But) you're out there being a leader. You care more about what they're going through."
At the ceremony, Ward made sure to give his Marines all the credit.
Returning home from Iraq, the 1987 Jerome High School alum, watched his Marines celebrated as heros in Hartford. As they passed through the streets escorted behind a motorcade, trucks blew their horns and people waved American flags.
"The Marines ... you couldn't have erased that smile from ear to ear," he said.
And while his daughter and wife flew to Hartford to greet Ward on that festive occasion, the soldier still wasn't home. His journey back to Idaho remained incomplete.
It has continued that way. Despite several visits home, Ward has spent the past year stuck in a job on Capitol Hill, feeling out of sorts while watching acrimonious battles waged over the future of his service, the war and the country.
"Sometimes I think I'd rather be in combat than on Capitol Hill - with these senators going at it," he said. "It is so divisive. Some of the language is so spiteful. It's hard for a guy from combat to listen to it."
Constant danger gave Ward a simpler world, where Americans fight for a common cause.
But the danger - the close calls - were often excruciating.
A sniper's bullet once grazed Ward, who was pacing outside a mosque while waiting for approval to raid it.
"I will never forget the whine of the bullet," said Ward, who convinced himself the bullet had struck him. "I was feeling around my neck (thinking) it got me. My knees began buckling."
Marines rushed to help, but found him untouched. He never was wounded in Iraq.
On Oct. 11, Ward, his wife Kirsten and their 2-year-old daughter will complete the long circuit home when his plane touches down in Boise. He plans to settle there or in Twin Falls, depending on his job prospects.
That's happy news for his sister in Gooding, his father in Twin Falls, his grandmother in Jerome and not least of all his mother, Mo Tranmer, who lives in Idaho Falls.
Tranmer has missed many nights of sleep between the Vietnam war, which killed her brother, and the war in Afghanistan, where her nephew fought, and the war in Iraq, where Ward and another of her nephews have fought.
"It was hard for me," Tranmer said. "It's a military family and it is a family that is extremely close, it's not like we want to send our kids out there. You know they are doing what they know they must."
And Ward said he will remain a Marine, attached to a Boise-area reserve company.
"These Marines went out and endured some pretty hellish times when we were there," Ward said. And then he chuckled and said showing the first sign of immodesty, "No other company commander received a Bronze Star."
Cass Friedman can be reached at 735-3241 or cfriedman@magicvalley.com.
Ellie